Dagger vs Source-to-Image
Dagger
dagger.ioSource-to-Image
github.comSide by side
| Figure | Dagger | Source-to-Image |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | $50/mo | Free |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Free trial | Yes | — |
| Open source | — | Yes |
| Web | Yes | — |
| Windows | Yes | Yes |
| macOS | Yes | Yes |
| Linux | Yes | Yes |
| Self-hosted | Yes | Yes |
| Plans published | 3 | 1 |
| Spec score · Container Build Tools | 8.5 (#6) | 8.1 (#12) |
| Purpose | Dagger provides a software stack for CI using a clean API, real code, and a portable DAG execution engine. | Source-to-Image is a toolkit and workflow for building reproducible container images from source code. |
| Self-hosting | Dagger documentation includes a self-hosting guide. | S2I is distributed as a command-line binary and can be run locally or inside infrastructure controlled by the user. |
Plans
In their own words
Dagger
Dagger is a software stack for continuous integration built around an API, executable code, and a portable DAG execution engine. Pipeline logic can run locally or in Dagger Cloud, with automatic caching and end-to-end tracing. Cloud Checks connect a GitHub repository to Dagger Cloud and run checks on Cloud Engines after events such as pushes or pull requests, without a CI workflow file. Official modules cover testing, linting, formatting, type checking, browser tests, and Helm chart validation, and can be extended in a user's preferred language. The CLI has installation instructions for macOS, Linux, and Windows, and the documentation includes a self-hosting guide. Individual is free and allows one user, 1,000,000 monthly events, one month of run history, and community support. Team costs $50 a month after a two-week trial, for up to 10 users, 10,000,000 monthly events, one year of run history, and email support. Enterprise pricing is custom; SSO and managed single-tenant deployment are contact items. The site links to security and compliance information.
Source-to-Image
Source-to-Image is a free, Apache-2.0 toolkit for building reproducible container images from source code. It places source in a builder image, lets that container prepare the application, and outputs a ready-to-run image. A documented workflow can build from a Git repository without a Dockerfile. Builder images may provide assemble and run scripts, plus optional scripts for saving artifacts and explaining usage. Compatible builders can reuse artifacts from an earlier output when incremental settings and scripts are supplied. A .s2iignore file filters source files and directories, while .s2i/environment defines build variables that also appear in the output image. S2I can use an OnBuild strategy with images containing Dockerfile ONBUILD instructions. Examples cover Docker, OpenShift, UBI, Ruby, and WildFly. It runs on Linux, macOS, and Windows, with Docker 1.6+ and Go 1.7.1+ listed as dependencies.